Tiger Shrimp Tango

Chapter Sixteen

SOUTH AMERICA

Toucans and parrots squawked from the edge of the jungle.

The mountains fell steeply before gently sloping into an apron of dense green foliage that ended in the sandy coastline along the unpatrolled border of Chile and Peru.

Surf rolled in from the Pacific, before an explosion of mist on the rocks. There was a piece of driftwood here and there, crabs darting out of holes, and a tiny beach villa pressed back against the jungle. It was the only sign of a human hand.

Curtains billowed out the living room window.

Inside the sparsely furnished bungalow, a tall, wiry man sat shirtless in dry swim trunks. He had ultra-short blond hair, a week’s growth after shaving his head. He was wearing the trunks because he was going for another mile swim in the ocean. That accounted for the muscular shoulders and pecs that were disproportionately developed for the rest of his torso. The swim, though, would have to wait.

The man’s job was to wait. Just live in the villa. The only task: Check in once a day on the Internet at precisely 2:35 P.M., like a nuclear submarine coming up to periscope depth and raising its antenna to get instructions from satellites. And like those subs, the vast majority of the time there were no instructions. The important thing was 2:35.

Because if a message did come, it would be dropped seconds before, to be read as quickly as possible and immediately deleted. Employing another espionage trick, the messages were never sent, so they could never be intercepted. Instead they were saved as drafts in an e-mail account, and the villa’s occupant had the password.

The villa’s previous occupant also had the password, and liked to take those ocean swims. But he was gone, at the hands of the current resident. Nothing personal. Orders. The earlier resident had received a message at 2:35 and went to Miami to handle a situation. But he got sloppy and became compromised. The person now at the villa’s computer had also been in Miami as backup, prepared to sanitize any mess that might develop, and there had been a big one. That’s how he inherited the bungalow.

It was a strange juxtaposition, the occupation and the house. The remote spot on the beach lent itself to decompression. Just the waves and the birds and your thoughts. It reminded the man of the assassin played by Max von Sydow in Three Days of the Condor, who found tranquillity by meticulously painting tiny cast-iron soldiers from forgotten wars.

2:34.

Fingers tapped the keyboard. An Internet account opened. Moments later, an e-mail popped up in the draft folder. He read it quickly. This time there was also a photo of the target, but he didn’t need to save it because he would be receiving a hard copy later that day in a briefcase exchange. He hit delete. The swim trunks would stay dry. Something had come up. Florida again. The flight left in two hours.

He went to a louvered closet. At the bottom was an already-packed carry-on of essentials for just such an occasion. Then he opened a round wall safe and thumbed through passports of various nationalities and names. He decided on Bolivia.

Dark clouds rolled in from the ocean, and wind carried the salt mist. He shuttered up the beach house and climbed into his Jeep, holding a mental image of the face he’d seen on the computer.

MEANWHILE . . .

“And here’s another thing about the people who don’t read.” Serge hit the gas when the light turned green. “They’re the same ones who think you’re a moron if you don’t text. I don’t text because of a philosophical code against the growing depersonalization predicted by Alvin Toffler and George Orwell.”

“I don’t text because my thumbs are too big,” said Coleman.

“But the non-readers are texting away like it’s the war effort,” said Serge. “They’d eliminate the debt if we could convert that energy to durable goods and stick it on cargo ships. It’s half the gross national product.”

“What’s the other half?”

“Car insurance,” said Serge. “Watch any channel on TV for any length of time, and every other commercial is a British lizard, an upwardly mobile caveman, a calcified chick named Flo, the anthropomorphic jerk named Mayhem who tricks you into accidents, the guy in a hard hat who hits cars with sledgehammers, the character who played the president in the show 24 saying, ‘That’s Allstate’s stand,’ ‘Nationwide is on your side,’ ‘Fifteen minutes could save you some shit.’ ”

“I like Mayhem,” said Coleman. “He makes me not feel so bad about breaking stuff.”

“And yet we’re still not manufacturing anything you can hold in your hands,” said Serge. “There’s your downfall of a global superpower. When space aliens visit centuries from now, they’ll whisk the dust away and conclude that America was dominated by a race of tiny-thumbed people who drove badly.”

“We’re not?”

“You may have a point,” said Serge. “And think about this: the simultaneous rise of texting and car insurance. Coincidence?”

“Last night’s episode of Glee warned about texting and driving,” said Coleman.

“Those Glee kids just keep on caring,” said Serge. “But the nation’s plight is now bigger than any teenage chorus line can handle. Technology has just passed our survival instinct, and the country is spinning on a stationary existential axis of make-believe importance: We text about a Tweet of a YouTube video posted on Facebook with a clip of Glee about not texting that we just texted about. Instead of actual life, we’re now living an air-guitar version of life.”

“Yow! Watch out!” Coleman lunged and grabbed Serge’s arms in an attempt to take over the steering wheel. The Firebird swerved across the lane. “Don’t you see it!”

“Coleman, get your fucking hands off me!” Serge swatted the arms away. “You almost made us crash. What’s gotten into you?”

He grabbed his chest. “You almost hit that weird beast in the road!”

“Coleman, it was a hooker.” Serge looked sideways with an odd expression. “And she’d already made it through the crosswalk.”

“You sure it was a hooker?”

“No question,” said Serge. “We’ve lived in Florida long enough that you should be able to identify them now without flash cards.”

“It must have been the snakes coming out of her head,” said Coleman. “That means it’s kicking in.”

“Why? What did you take?”

“I don’t remember,” said Coleman. “But it must have been good shit. That’s a sign of good shit: You don’t remember taking it and then see monsters and almost crash.”

Serge stared at him with scorn, then faced forward. “We need to buy insurance.”

“More head-snakes,” said Coleman, face pasted to his passenger window. “Where are we?”

The Trans Am raced due south on a major artery. They passed an open-air drug supermarket with handshake exchanges of bindles and cash, then pawn and beauty-product shops with door buzzers and baseball bats under the counters, a run-down motel full of police cars responding to aggravated domestic violence and an escaped monkey that had been in the news. More prostitutes, guys drinking from brown bags, shopping-cart pushers, slumped-over bus bench urchins, and run-on-sentence conspiracy preachers. The intersection people beckoned drivers at red lights to roll down windows for one-dollar flowers, bottled water and an underground newspaper written by hand. The area had become so notoriously sketchy that civic leaders snapped into action and fixed everything by installing new rows of expensive, decorative light posts.

“I absolutely love Orange Blossom Trail,” said Serge. “Also known as OBT and south Orlando’s red-light district, but that’s a bit judgmental.”

“Two dudes are having a sword fight with broken-off car antennas.”

“Ooo! Look, look!” yelled Serge. “They put up those supercool new light poles that tell people they’re in the wrong part of town.”

“The poles are bending toward the car and growling.” Coleman nodded. “Good shit.”

“I always seek out those poles,” said Serge. “They steer you to interesting new friends . . . Like this guy.”

A light turned red. The Firebird stopped. A bearded man on the curb made a rolling-down motion with his hand. Serge cranked the glass open. “What’s the good word, my fine fellow statesman?”

“Can I have a dollar?”

“Sure thing.” Serge uncrinkled a George Washington from his wallet and passed it out the window.

“Appreciate it.”

“Hey, wait,” said Serge. “Where’s my underground newspaper? I saw you give one to that other driver.”

“It was my last. Actually my only. Handwritten. That way no stray copies can fall into the wrong laps. That’s how they got Charlie.”

“Serge,” said Coleman. “The light turned green . . . I think.”

“Let ’em go around.” Serge hit his blinking hazards and turned back to the man. “Then what else do you have?”

“Let’s see.” The man reached in his back pocket with a quizzical expression. He removed a wad of paper. “Oh, yeah. I drew this last night.”

Serge took it through the window. Coleman looked at the page, then screamed and flattened himself against the passenger door. “Swarms of locusts with scorpion tails, people’s intestines sliced out, nuns with wooden rulers . . .” Quietly weeping in his hands now. “Serge, please make this stuff wear off.”

“It’s not the drug you took,” said Serge. “He really did draw this . . .” Then at the man: “And not too bad, if I do say so. What’s it represent? The Apocalypse from Revelation?”

“No, I was just doodling in the hardware store up the street.” The man wiped his brow. “They have air-conditioning. I get some of my best inspiration in there.”

“I know exactly what you mean.” Serge tucked the picture in his pocket and handed the man another dollar. “What’s the word on the street?”

“They just caught another monkey.”

“It’s getting embarrassing.”

“No kidding.” The man stuck the dollar in his pocket. “Busting up mailboxes and lawn statues all the way to Altamonte Springs. It just wasn’t right.”

“Like the famous Tampa Bay monkey,” said Serge. “He was becoming a regular D. B. Cooper.”

“I read about him,” said the bum. “Sightings all the way west to the St. Petersburg exercise trail, but police think that was just a copycat in a monkey costume, jumping out and dancing in front of Rollerbladers before darting back into the woods.”

Serge stared at the ceiling and scratched his chin.

“Serge.” Coleman peeked out one half-open eye. “Is that why you made me wear that outfit?”

“It was you guys?” said the bearded man.

“Why text when you have imagination?” said Serge. “What about Casey Anthony?”

“Just scraps of rumors and dubious innuendo. Harder to find than the monkey.” He pointed north. “She’s been reported everywhere from a Magic basketball game to a Ruby Tuesday’s . . .” His arm swung south. “And someone swears they spotted her at the Tupperware Museum.”

“Wait a sec,” said Coleman. “You’re pulling my leg. There’s no such thing as a Tupperware Museum.”

“Oh, but there most certainly is,” said Serge. “From the old days. Roadside-attraction gold.”

“You’re really serious?” said Coleman. “Tupperware?”

“Not only that, but the histories of Orlando and Tupperware are intertwined farther back than Disney.” Serge turned to the homeless man. “What was Casey supposedly doing there?”

“In the gift shop buying a gelatin mold.”

“Must be a false sighting,” said Serge. “From all reports, Tupperware isn’t how she likes to get her freak on.”

“My thinking, too,” said the man. “Unless she’s into something so twisted we have yet to fathom.”

Serge began rolling up the window. “Still, all leads must be followed.” The light turned green again. He switched off his emergency flashers and sped south.

Coleman sagged in his passenger seat with his head lying atop the window frame. “I don’t see hookers anymore.”

“Because we crossed the skank equator back into family land,” said Serge.

“The places with baby strollers where you don’t let me smoke dope?”

“Until I say otherwise.”

“This sucks.” Coleman idly flicked his lighter. “Let’s go somewhere else.”

“Can’t,” said Serge. “Mahoney’s idea. Wants us in position again. He’s trying to track another scammer with that Big Dipper company. Credit-card receipts, turnpike cameras, crime reports. Then they did a geographical probability cone like a hurricane chart pointed at Orlando. But like a hurricane, it’s a cone of uncertainty.”

“What are we supposed to do in the meantime?”

“Sit on standby and wait for his call like a nuclear submarine.”

Coleman flicked the lighter again and waved it in front of his eyes. “So what’s all that jazz about Florida and Tupperware?”

“Some of our richest heritage unknown to the general public.” Serge grabbed the coffee tube under his shirt. “Remember the home parties when you were a kid?”

“Those seriously rocked!” said Coleman. “Outrageously huge celebrations . . .”

“. . . Neighbors descended from all over in reverent awe like someone had discovered a glowing meteorite in their backyard,” said Serge. “But what got lost in that Tupperware gold rush were some of the earliest shots in a watershed social movement.”

“I crawled under a table and stole all the deviled eggs . . .”

“Women’s lib!” said Serge. “Except they didn’t realize it at the time, so they still wore long, elegant white gloves.”

“. . . Got a tummy ache.”

“Who were these pioneers? you ask. Why, Brownie Wise and her troops,” said Serge. “Earl Tupper invented the product but had trouble moving it in department stores. Then he noticed all these huge sales orders coming in from a single person in Florida, and he’s, like, what incredible store is this? And Brownie says, ‘No store. I hold parties in homes.’ What? Just one woman roaming the Orlando area and chatting in living rooms? That’s impossible. But then all the top executives triple-checked her sales figures, which surpassed some of the largest department stores in the country, and they practically shit in every piece of Tupperware in the office.”

Coleman giggled. “The gelatin mold.”

“Let’s not push the metaphor too far,” said Serge. “Anyway, here’s the key part: Back then, a lot of men would condescend to women and say, ‘Don’t hurt your pretty little heads thinking about business stuff. That’s our work.’ But Brownie had already recruited a multi-tiered marketing force of latter-day Rosie the Riveters. They went wildcat around the male world, creating their own business model, ordering the product under the radar, and just did it. By the time everyone noticed, it was a stunning success that couldn’t be denied.”

“Serge, you don’t mean to say . . .”

“That’s right, the Tupperware party was invented in Florida!” said Serge. “And not more than a stone’s throw from right here.”

“Tupperware’s got my respect,” said Coleman. “And all the stoners, too. Plastic burp lids may not be our bag, but stoners know from parties, and we have to give a major nod to their munchy spreads. My old group had a couple heads who knew how to cook—not too many, because the rest of us compared notes and found products in the supermarket where you could open the package, stick your hand in, then stick your hand in your mouth. That was our version of cooking. But a few of the guys actually did all that unnecessary stuff and whipped up some boss nibbles for after the weed guy finally arrived except the weed guy was always late, and everything got too cold or warm and started drying and looking funky, and you called the weed guy and said, ‘You’ve fucked up the burritos again, dude’ . . .”

“Coleman—”

“But the best stoner munchie layout isn’t in the ballpark of even the weakest Tupperware party. Deviled eggs were just the beginning: You had your celery with cream cheese, tomatoes stuffed with tuna salad, olives with toothpicks, Ritz crackers and Velveeta. That’s real food.”

“It was a magic time,” said Serge. “They made me go to bed, which just made me want to stay up. So I snuck down the hall and watched my mom preparing with the local rep, stacking lettuce tubs in perfect pyramids on top of a card table in front of the Magnavox. And I couldn’t believe my eyes: I’d never seen the tube off in the evening. Tupperware was even bigger than TV!”

“Like the Beatles and Jesus . . .”

“And later the party got so effective that it spilled into our backyard with mosquito torches and Harvey Wallbangers, and I spied on the adults by sticking my head through my bedroom curtains and watching the rest of the night as they continued drinking, buying more and more Tupperware and lighting the wrong ends of cigarettes. Except back then, God knows why, they made some bedroom curtains with tiny pieces of fiberglass in the fabric, and all the next day my neck itched like a bastard. Same as now whenever I go to the barber and they put on that whole bullshit charade of wrapping the paper strip around my neck and sprinkling talcum powder and finishing off with that home-plate-umpire brush, and I say, ‘Let’s dispense with this Cecil B. De Mille production once and for all. We both know a bunch of little hair pieces will get down in my neck no matter what you do, and it’ll itch like crazy. So the sooner I pay, the sooner I can go jump in the ocean like I always do.’ And the whole time I’m thinking of Tupperware.”

“You’re a complex person,” said Coleman.

“And yet I’m content with the simplest things.” Serge reached in a pocket and smiled as he unfolded the one-dollar drawing from a bearded guy.

A cell phone rang. Serge checked the display and sighed.

Mahoney.

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